Eight students from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) have been selected as Hoover Fellows, an initiative that enables students to be a part of advancing education, business, technology, and economic development. 

The Alabama Innovation Commission that Gov. Kay Ivey established in July of 2020 is considered Alabama’s first statewide commission that focuses on technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation. The commission partnered with the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank affiliated with Stanford University, to bring together  leading scholars to collaborate on economic development, education, and technology innovation to advance its innovation ecosystem. 

UAB students were selected to work with the AIC scholars on the following projects: 

1. Business Incentives and Prosperity: A project that will evaluate Alabama’s existing incentives to attract businesses and make recommendations based on recent incentive programs around the country. 

2. Deploying Broadband-Based Education: A project that will look at the current opportunities for deploying broadband-based education throughout the state to augment the current capacities of K-12 educators to deliver high-quality instruction in top priority areas, such as technology, science, mathematics, and engineering.

3. Fostering the Role of Universities: A project that aspires to make fixed, concrete recommendations for state government policy to build on Alabama’s universities’ strengths and grow Alabama’s technology and innovation economy.

4. The Outdoor Recreation Lab:

 A Lab that will evaluate the hypothesis that the Cumberland Plateau is an underdeveloped resource for the State of Alabama. The lab will specifically evaluate its natural endowments as compared to its physical and business infrastructure. 

Stanford’s Hoover Institution is led by former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and she extended the invitation to UAB students to apply for the institution’s initiatives with AIC. 

UAB Provost Pam Benoit commented that: “It is exciting to have our students involved in projects that are deemed priorities by our state government." The students and the faculty will have the opportunity to develop close working relationships and share ideas through this project.